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Donald N. Levine. Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 299 pp. Cloth: $39.00. ISBN: 0-226-47553-0.
A fascinating book this is. Quite unlike most books on higher education in both style and substance, it offers two intriguing stories: First, it records "in as much complexity as space permits, the ideals and practices of an extraordinary educational venture" that promoted "excellent educational thought and practice" (p. 5) at the University of Chicago. Second, it builds on the accumulated wisdom of the Chicago experience to offer a thoughtfully developed curricular approach to liberal learning that fits the challenges of today's world.
Spurred by discomfort with Allan Bloom's 1987 best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, Professor Levine spent a decade developing this inspiring and insightful response. He drew on his career-long engagement with undergraduate learning at the University of Chicago-as professor and, for five years, as dean of the College-to offer this rich, deeply considered restatement of both the ideals and the practices of teaching for liberal learning.
Part 1 sets the stage by offering a sense of the diverse "liberalizing" purposes that shaped philosophies of education in different cultural contexts and time periods. Part 2, the most extensive section, recounts the University of Chicago's 20thcentury experiments with liberal learning. Part 3 offers a synthesis and a new departure, in which Levine offers clear-thinking, helpful distinctions, an array of pertinent illustrations, and examples of courses he...